


for a good cause

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Established Relationship, Fights, Guilt, Loss of Trust, M/M, Resentment, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-05 06:02:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20484065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “Did you even stop and argue about it or did you just say yes to General Draven’s order without thinking it through?”





	for a good cause

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smaragdbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/gifts).

Kallus is quiet, not such an unusual occurrence for him, of course, but even he can tell he’s pushing it this time. There’s not any one good indication, but Kallus wouldn’t be where he is now if he wasn’t good at reading a room. Phoenix Squadron is every bit as cordial and accommodating as they ever are, folding Kallus into the crew with an ease he finds enviable, like he’s been there all along. Or belongs there. It’s nice for all that he knows it’s an illusion, a reprieve from reality. But it’s not real and there is an underlying tension surrounding him that Kallus isn’t helping with his unusually strong reticence to unbend even for five minutes. On a normal day, he has the good grace to at least pretend he’s a social creature. For Zeb, at least, if for no one else.

He tries not to feel like he’s back on Lothal, burying everything in him that would get him killed—namely: his conscience, compassion, and desire to be better than what he is.

“You’re schemin’ something,” Zeb is saying, staring at him from across the table in the minuscule nook that serves as the Ghost’s galley. Zeb has already devoured his meal, while Kallus is busy shredding a thick slice of bread between nervous fingers. Leaning forward, Zeb laces his fingers into a bridge on which to rest his chin. “What’s Rebel Intelligence got you into this time? I know you’re not here outta the goodness of your heart.”

Kallus flinches and stares pointedly at Zeb’s empty plate, the only neutral place to look at the moment. _It’s not a criticism,_ he thinks, mind working furiously to remind himself that they’re past the recriminations these days. _He’s not criticizing you._ “You know I can’t tell you,” he answers, swallowing bile. The remaining chunk of bread hits his plate with a thud, scattering a few more crumbs, some even landing on the table. His voice isn’t quite so rigid that it’ll break, but it’s a near thing and he hastens to soften it up so that it might survive another day. Better for it to be pliable than shattered irrevocably. “Though I wish it were so.”

Zeb scoffs. “Bunch of mysterious bastards you lot are,” he says, but it’s fond, warm in a way that Kallus will never be and doesn’t deserve. If there’s a glint of worry in his gaze, Kallus can ignore it. He has to, because to do anything else would make the job impossible and the job is the only thing he can allow to matter.

This isn’t, he knows, how Phoenix Squadron operates. It’s not how a lot of the crews within the Rebellion operate, getting to keep their souls and hopes and grand, lofty ideals intact. But it’s how Intelligence operates, because there has to be an exchange somewhere along the way. A soul for a soul. One ideal destroyed for one ideal protected.

It’s a fair trade—perhaps not even that given how tainted with blood and death and regret Kallus already is and just how shining and purely righteous some of the people around him are—but sometimes Kallus wishes it could be different, that his joining the Rebellion wasn’t just a continuation of the same shit he used to do, just for the good guys. “You know us,” he says, plastering a brittle smile on his mouth as he reached for Zeb’s massive paw. The tension in Zeb’s shoulders melts away, bit by bit, as he lets Kallus give it a squeeze and then pull it across the divide between them to press a kiss to the inside of Zeb’s hairy wrist. “None of us met a secret we didn’t like to keep.”

It’s not true, Kallus tries to convince himself. But it’s not not true either, because Kallus has always been reticent to tell Zeb exactly how he feels.

In approximately seventeen hours, it won’t matter anyway, might as well remain a mysterious bastard for a little while longer. It’ll make things easier on Zeb if this is the thought that remains to him once they’re done here.

*

Olaxia Seven does not matter in the grand stream of galactic history. It won’t ever be the site of a great battle, will never hold much strategic value to either the Rebellion or the Empire, and should the Rebellion be victorious, it probably won’t matter much to whatever Republic succeeds Imperial rule.

For this one brief moment in time, however, it has become the most important place in the galaxy.

Kallus wishes it weren’t so. Or, he wishes he didn’t have to be here to participate.

Home to a token Imperial presence and a minuscule local population, it houses some of worst of Imperial research into biotech weapons the galaxy’s ever likely to see, at least according to Rebel intelligence. For once, the Empire has taken a different tack than usual. Rather than protecting it with a fortress-like zeal, they’ve settled for protection via obscurity, which would have worked indefinitely if not for a stray bit of luck and an operative with the know how and experience to realize good information when they stumble across it.

As the Ghost’s ramp lowers, dust whirls in the air and settles on his clothes. It glows a dull red against the brown of his jacket, sparkling under the weak afternoon sunlight. Zeb’s already growling and scrubbing at his fur and Kallus wants desperately to brush him off. He tightens his hands into fists and clenches his jaw instead.

“You gonna be okay out there?” Zeb asks, dubious. “Doing whatever it is you’re doing?”

The Ghost has its own mission and Zeb’s already tried arguing with Hera and Kallus both about how unfair it is that they’ve got their full team and Kallus is alone, but Hera is smart and trusting and Kallus does not want Zeb there and between the two of them, they convince Zeb it’ll be fine.

It won’t be fine, not once this is over, but Kallus can’t let himself think that far ahead. He won’t be able to do what he must.

“I’ll be okay, Garazeb,” he replies, expressing as much of his affection with only his words as he can manage. It’s not easy and he’s not very good at it, but Zeb smiles at him and rolls his eyes and hears what Kallus doesn’t dare say. Maybe that’ll be a comfort one day. Maybe not. “You just liberate that airfield of yours. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point tomorrow.”

“And then we’ll head home,” Zeb says, certain to the point of arrogance. His naïveté is charming and his optimism is staggering. He’s planning for a future that can’t exist and he doesn’t even notice that anything else might happen to interfere. Of course they’ll head home. Zeb will want him to head home, why wouldn’t he? What could possibly happen that would change that truth?

Many things, Kallus knows, but he’s never had to deal with any of them until now.

Kallus sighs and finally allows himself to touch Zeb, just his fingers around as much of Zeb’s wrist as his hand could reach. “And then we’ll head home.”

There wasn’t time for more, not with Ezra bounding down the ramp behind them and clapping them both on the shoulder as he slipped between them.

There’s less resentment in Kallus at the disruption than he expects. It makes it easier for him to pretend this is a normal mission, that it’s okay Zeb gets distracted by a taunt from Ezra and traipses after him, that the only goodbye he gets is a wave of a purple furry paw and a, “Don’t do anything stupid out there, eh,” instead of a proper goodbye.

He doesn’t know and Kallus is not authorized to tell him and Kallus is as okay with that as he knows how to be.

Which is to say: not at all.

*

From what he can tell by comm’s chatter, Phoenix Squadron’s mission is going off without a hitch. Perfectly executed, they come out of it with barely a scratch on them and that only because Chopper managed to launch a rock that got in the way of Ezra’s head—Ezra’s account—or because Ezra, for all that he’s a Jedi apprentice, needs to learn how to kriffing duck—Chopper’s. He’s relieved as he sets the last of the detonators, only catching bits and pieces over the comms. At the chosen frequency and Kallus’s current distance from the airfield, in meters under the ground, if not as the crow flies, it’s a static-ridden mess, but as long as he can tell that nobody’s in immediate danger, he can relax.

Luckily, the distraction Phoenix Squadron is unintentionally involved in has reduced the Imperial presence in this base to nearly zero. Just as he hoped. Just as he needed. He’s come across a few stragglers, the youngest of the group, and has had no trouble neutralizing them, for all the good it will do in approximately twenty minutes.

At least they won’t be awake to know they’re going to suffocate or be crushed to death beneath the weight of the base as it falls apart around them. He spares a moment to wonder how many of them truly know what they’ve gotten themselves into here, how open the few researchers here have been with them. It’s good odds they know something’s been amiss here for a long time, but even Kallus knows how reticent the scientific minded can be, their lofty ideals at odds with the devil’s deals they’ve made with Moffs and various Navy sponsors in order to continue their precious work.

It shouldn’t have been this easy to set the detonators, shouldn’t now be so easy to slip out of the base, attention almost entirely focused on what was happening above ground. He’ll have to time this just right.

Rebel Intelligence does not want it known that the Rebellion is aware of the Empire’s actions here, but they want the structure gone badly enough that they’ve invented a mission out of nothing. Phoenix Squadron is securing that airbase because the Rebels need a temporary foothold here—that’s what they think anyway and it’s what the Empire will think when it picks up the deliberate trail of intel some of Draven’s team has left behind—and if it just so happens that there’s a tragic collapse of the base underneath, well.

Sometimes, these things happen, don’t they?

What the Empire doesn’t care about—what Kallus cares intensely about, but can’t actually solve or fix or otherwise make better—is the fact that this collapse will utterly disrupt the surrounding cave systems and burrows which the locals, what few of them remain, call home. There’s no time to organize a rescue, nor would they want one from what Draven has told him, and it would blow the entire operation if they did try to save them.

Kallus could have asked why, maybe he should have, but he’s been in intelligence long enough to know the answer won’t satisfy, not even when the reasoning is air tight and utterly, incontrovertibly sound.

Draven wouldn’t have given it the okay without going through Mon Mothma and she wouldn’t have given her okay without a lot of thought. That’s enough for him, because it has to be. This is his job and he’s been tasked with this particular mission and if he thinks about it he’s done this and worse already for people who are nowhere near as principled as Rebellion leadership.

It’s a colder comfort than he would like.

He hears the all clear from Hera along with the whoosh of a small, tactical detonation up top that is Kallus’s cue. By now, he’s exactly where he needs to be and doesn’t hesitate to key the sequence that will destroy the base and everything around it.

Three minutes later, he’s picked up and surrounded by five horrified faces as they watch the ground give way beneath the airfield.

Three of them look horrified at the destruction, mouths open, eyes wide; Chopper chirrups uncertainly. Even he apparently thinks this was too much and that’s saying a lot. All thinks considered, Chopper generally enjoys it when things explode. It’s a testament to the sheer scale that he’s not expressing joy at it.

Zeb just narrows his eyes and turns away. When Kallus calls after him, he doesn’t answer.

*

It’s not in actual fact the longest trip Kallus has ever taken in the _Ghost_, but it certainly feels like it all things considered. He doesn’t go back to his and Zeb’s quarters and considers telling Ezra he might as well take his own bunk for the evening because Kallus doesn’t intend to go back to the room. Part of it is the fact that he can’t face Zeb like this, not when his hands are shaking and his stomach threatens to revolt at every moment. Zeb knows exactly what happened, put two and two together more quickly than anyone else.

Nobody’s troubled him as he sits in the galley. It’s so bizarre a circumstance—someone’s always tripping over someone else over here—that Kallus is almost certain that Zeb’s told them his suspicions and they’re all avoiding him as a result.

He didn’t go into this intending to use them so, but that’s what’s happened, damn his intentions and desires for this to have gone otherwise. Perhaps if he’d argued more strenuously with Draven, it might have worked out differently, or if he’d thought about it more and approached Draven with a better idea. Hells, he could have said no outright and even if the mission went forward, he wouldn’t have been complicit in it.

With his hand cupped across his eyes, he doesn’t see who walks into the galley, but he can hear the familiar sound of their footsteps and doesn’t quite flinch, a win by all accounts. He’s been a coward before and he promised himself he wouldn’t be one again, so he swallows and lifts his head, looks Zeb in the eye. “Garazeb,” he says, because Zeb deserves his acknowledgment. After today, he deserves much more.

Zeb is tentative, wary, as though he’s not sure how to react, whether he should be understanding or angry. Kallus knows what he’d prefer, but he also knows what he deserves and there’s a chasm so wide between them that he’s not sure a bridge can be constructed. “I can never tell if you’re upset or not when you call me that,” Zeb says, hesitant.

Kallus tries to smile, but the effort is too great to be worth it. Anyway, he fears he might shatter if he managed it, the final, proverbial straw. “I like the sound of it,” he admits, too late to be useful. He hadn’t known that Zeb didn’t realize he spoke it only with affection. “I’m not upset.”

Nodding, Zeb takes the seat across from him. How different it is now to sit here. Yesterday already seems so far away in comparison. This close, Kallus can see the anger Zeb’s trying to keep hidden away. It’s a testament to the regard he holds for Kallus that he doesn’t rip him to shreds here and now and it’s more courtesy than Kallus deserves. He draws in a deep breath, hunches forward. “You gonna tell me what happened out there?”

Kallus’s throat goes dry. No matter how much he swallows, he can’t make his tongue unstick enough to answer.

“Let me guess,” Zeb says, when he’s given Kallus plenty of time to answer. “You can’t.”

“You know this already.” The metal beneath his palms is smooth and cool, grounding. “That’s what being in Rebel Intelligence means.”

There is silence, silence until Zeb’s fist strikes the table. The resulting bang thunders throughout the galley. “Damn it, Kallus. There are people down there who are going to die because of what you did, a whole civil—” His voice cracks, twisting the knife Kallus has already lodged in his own chest. Zeb is saying nothing that he doesn’t already know, but somehow it hurts more hearing it out of Zeb’s mouth. “Did you even stop and argue about it or did you just say yes to General Draven’s order without thinking it through?”

_Yes, of course,_ he thinks, despairing. _How could you think otherwise?_ “I am the one with the most experience in these matters, aren’t I? Of course I’d have no qualms. Why else do you think he gave me this mission?” The words are ugly and Kallus feels uglier for speaking them, but they’re out of his mouth before he can stop them from spilling forth. He doesn’t want to be the man he was, but it’s hard to feel otherwise when he’s imperiled yet another entire race of people at the request of his superiors. It’s as much like an Imperial officer as he’s felt in years.

He pushes himself to his feet, resentment smoldering within him, ready to catch alight on any kindling that wanders past. If Zeb needles him further, that might be all he needs to do something else he regrets.

Kallus makes it as far as the doorway before Zeb speaks again. “Was it worth it? Your target, I mean.”

No. Yes. Before, he might have said it wasn’t his concern. Now he realizes that he’s the only one who’s ever going to have to live with the decisions he’s made, the orders he’s followed and the ones he hasn’t. In the years since he started on this blasted journey, he hasn’t really learned anything worth knowing. “I don’t know,” he says through clenched teeth. Hand gripping the doorway, he leans against the frame. “We’ve struck a blow against the Empire. That’s about all I can tell you.”

“Oh, good. A blow against the Empire. That makes it okay,” Zeb says. “I didn’t know you were still this much of a bastard.”

“Perhaps you were always more right about me than you knew.”

“I thought you’d learned something.” Zeb’s paws curl into fists before him. He speaks through gritted teeth, his words sharp as shattered glass. The disdain in them cuts Kallus to the quick. “I thought we’d taught one another something. I didn’t know you were the same man doing the same awful work as before.”

Kallus wants so desperately for it to be different, for Zeb’s words not to strike true, but they do. They strike truer than even Zeb can guess. Apologies and explanations crowd his mouth, desperate to be freed, but Kallus knows a pointless fight when he sees one. Zeb would not want to hear them, so he will not trouble Zeb with them.

This is perhaps the only thing left that Kallus can do for him.

At least it doesn’t seem possible that Zeb can be more disappointed in him than in this moment. And Kallus can ensure it regardless. He can do that much for Zeb.

“I guess,” Kallus says, drawing in a deep breath in order to steady him through the last words he ever intends to say to Zeb, “you thought wrong.” 


End file.
